Birds of Prey

by David Drake

  Perennius lay under a flapping edge of the sail. He tried to stand up but was surprised by the weight of the spray-dampened linen. Calvus gripped a double handful of the canvas and lifted it for the agent and Sabellia. “It’s just my damned leg,” Perennius muttered in self-apology.

  “Come on, come on,” Sestius was demanding, “Get up, you don’t want to roll overboard now, do you?” He rapped at the heels of Marines who still lay on the decks, using the vine-wood baton that served him both as rank insignia and a practical tool.

  “Glad I wasn’t on that,” Gaius muttered as he surveyed the remains of the fighting tower. The thigh-thick mast lay across it.

  The cry from below decks was wordless and riveting. It was a moment later before the screams, swelling sternward from the front of the rowing chamber, finally contained a message intelligible to those standing frozen above: “Water! We’re sinking!”

  The Eagle had drifted to a halt several hundred feet from where she ground the pirates under. There was some flotsam off the stern to starboard, but none of it appeared to be living. There was nothing else on the sea for scale or reference except the liburnian’s own shadow dimming the brighter highlights of the waves.

  One of the Marines trembled, then jumped straight over the side. He must have sunk like a stone in his armor. Perennius had other things now to worry about.

  The rush on deck this time led by the cook. His assistant and the slaves must have been set to oars for the final pull, because none of them were intermixed with the next score of seamen climbing through the hatchway. The grate had been displaced from the forward ventilator when the first pirate ship struck. Now the vent provided a long, wide passage for rowers who jumped up on their benches and clambered through. Astern, the after hatch was spewing up the rest of the oarsmen despite anything the officers could do. The coxswain’s drum could be heard banging furiously over the shouts.

  Gaius clutched the agent’s wrist in a grip that made the older man wince. “Aulus!” the young courier cried, “what are they doing? We’re all right! We’re not sinking!”

  Got a hundred seamen who’d argue with you, Perennius thought. He was not quite bitter enough at his friend’s incipient hysteria to say that out loud, however. Everyone had his own terror. Gaius had hidden his own so well in the past that when it broke out, it was the most irritating, a trusted prybar that suddenly snapped.

  Perennius’ eyes wandered toward the heap of canvas. It covered the ballista and perhaps the shards and coals of the amphora which had held the fire. Unbanked, scattered, the coals must have gone out by now. Must have. “Whatever it is,” the agent said in a voice that reserved judgment, “we’ll deal with it.” He used his free hand to release the other from his protégé’s grip. There was nothing clearly useful to be doing. Even the sailors, once they had swarmed from the rowing chamber, only milled around on deck babbling prayers. “Blazes,” Perennius muttered, and he climbed down the ladder that had just passed the rowers upward.

  When the agent had jumped down to get the fire and oil, the belly of the ship had been full of men and sound. Now the only men were two officers, the coxswain and Leonidas himself. They were stumbling forward, over the litter of broken benches and the oar handles which swung slowly as the waves levered at their blades. That flaccid creaking was not the only sound below, however. There was also the gurgling rush of water.

  The Eagle was decked at about her normal full-load waterline, a little more than two feet above the keel and bottom-planking. There was no proper hold. The liburnian’s only cargo was her rowing complement on its two-tiered benches. The bilges had filled within hours of the ship’s return to the water, because her seams had opened during the years she was laid up. After the hull planking had swelled, that dangerous flow had subsided to a seepage that kept waste in the bilges wet enough to slosh and stink but which no longer threatened the life of the ship.

  The oar deck stood in water forward. The flow was not only in sheets through started seams, but also in an angry geyser around the cook’s stores. Part of the bow must have been staved in. The Germans whose flesh had greased the outer hull would shortly have their revenge.

  “Pollux, captain!” moaned the coxswain, “we are sinking. Pollux, how could you ram us into them when you knew the hull was rotten as punk? Oh, Castor and Pollux, favor a seaman who—”

  “Shut up!” snarled Leonidas. The Tarantine still wore his sword. Its sheath had worked around to his back like a shagreen tail. “We’ll rig the sail over the bows to slow the leaking, then we’ll pull for shore. Land can’t be more than just over the horizon.”

  Water gurgled and curled at his insteps. It was well up on Perennius’ shins. The agent could see that the bottom rung of the companion ladder was about to go under.

  The coxswain broke. His sandals splashed, then squelched, as he ran toward the aft hatch along the upper tier of benches.

  “Well, what else can we do, then?” Leonidas screamed at his retreating back. The captain turned, cursing in polyglot. Then he sprang past Perennius and up the ladder. The agent could see the tears in Leonidas’ eyes.

  Perennius climbed the ladder after the captain, but only in a physical sense was he following Leonidas now. The agent recalled how blithely he had bounded up and down through the hatchway less than an hour before. Well, the almighty Sun knew the same two inches of iron could have stiffened more of him than one thigh.

  Leonidas was giving loud orders and gesturing at the sail with his sword. He seemed to have drawn the weapon to cut entangling cordage, but the gestures became increasingly brusque as men ignored him. A deck crewman, then two others, moved to help. The bulk of the crowd now on deck was rowers. On duty, they had had too little contact with Leonidas to respond to him as an officer when they were shaken with panic.

  Both Gaius and Calvus waited at the hatch for the agent. They bent together, each supporting Perennius beneath one elbow and lifting him back on deck smoothly. If you can’t have two good legs, the agent thought wryly, be a cripple with friends. Blazes.

  He put a hand on the waist of either man and shooed them ten feet down the deck where there was less congestion of men working or babbling in fear. “Sestius!” he called, knowing that when the centurion joined, Sabellia would come also. The agent did not want to use the Gallic woman’s name, did not want to think about her—did not want her to become separated.

  Sestius strode to them promptly. He had been lending a clumsy hand to Leonidas and his sailors. The centurion’s face was flushed even darker than usual. “Sir,” he said, “we’re going to wrap the sail over the bow like a bandage. That’ll stop the water coming in until we can make proper repairs on—”

  “At ease!” Perennius said sharply. Blazes, they were all coming loose. Maybe he was himself and he just didn’t realize it. Sabellia watched from beyond the centurion’s shoulder. Her hand was tight on her knife hilt, another response to tension when its cause was unapproachable. “We’re going to leave the ship, now,” the agent said to the faces bending close to his. “We’re going to use this grating—” he touched a boot to the wooden grate displaced from the forward ventilator—“as a float, and we’re going to kick it and paddle it along all night if we have to until we reach land.”

  Both Gaius and Sestius started to speak. “Aulus, we can’t—” blurted out with, “Sir, the sail will—”

  Both reactions were expected. “At ease!” Perennius snarled. He glared at the two military men. By god, he might not be able to lead men or organize them, but he could damned well make a small group listen while he spoke! “We can do it, and we are going to do it,” he said fiercely to the panic which did not quite rule Gaius’ face. “Because the whole hull is cracking, and that sail isn’t going to do a damned thing for the big hole in the bow anyway. Now, get your armor off and your boots. Move!”

  The order gave both men what they needed, a raft of hope on which their minds could float. Only Perennius himself had to worry about their real chances of paddlin
g a fucking grate the gods knew—

  “Land seems to be about seven miles off, Aulus Perennius,” the bald man said. “The currents are a question, of course, but I was raised for strength—” he smiled—“as you know.”

  “Blazes, we’re going to get through this,” the agent said. Gaius and the centurion were fumbling at buckles. Their fingers were swollen by the shock of recent battle. “I said we would, didn’t I?” Gods, Calvus had learned to smile like a human; and he, Aulus Perennius, was making jokes about his own sense of duty. “What is the land?” he asked aloud. “Cyprus or the mainland? I haven’t much cared in the past so long as the seamen were satisfied; and I don’t think this is the time to ask.”

  Two of Leonidas’ men had dropped over the side. They were clinging to the hawsers they would try to run beneath the keel. The stern of the Eagle swung in the breeze. It rose noticeably higher from the sea than did the bow, so that it caught more of the wind now that they were not under sail.

  “I don’t know either,” the traveller said. He gestured westward again. “The—heat of the air currents rising shows that there is land, but I don’t know which land. I have many abilities, Aulus Perennius, but not many skills. Strength doesn’t make me a trained warrior, and seeing farther into the—seeing light when others cannot, let me put it that way—doesn’t teach me geography.”

  “Help me,” called Sabellia.

  Sestius and the agent reacted with equal cold-eyed promptitude. “Mine, by the Lord,” muttered a seaman in Syriac. Perennius rabbit-punched him, spilling the man down on his side before he could snatch at the amphora Sabellia was trying to raise through the ventilator.

  The crew was expected to buy their food each evening when the ship was beached. There was a quantity of emergency stores, however, grain and wine, for times when they made land after dark or a storm prevented proper foraging. Those stores were still stowed below between the benches. The fact had been forgotten by men to whom the rowing chamber had become a place of fear and rising water. While the men of her own party were preoccupied, Sabellia had slid down through the vent and had manhandled free an amphora of wine. Sheer determination did not, however, give her the strength to lift the awkward five-gallon container over her head unaided.

  “Take the jar,” Perennius said to the centurion. There was already a movement of men toward the container. Some crewmen started to slip below to get their own. Leonidas cried out in fury. The agent ignored him. He bent at the waist, offering his left hand to Sabellia when Sestius had snatched the amphora up by its ears. With her weight on his good leg, Perennius lifted her. He shouted, “More wine below! Enough for all of us!” Under his breath, he added to the man and woman, “Now, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  The sea was growing darker now. The sky was still clear and seemingly bright, but the individuals of the Eagle’s crew were losing definition even as the liburnian’s bow slipped lower. “Wait,” said Sabellia, knotting her sash around the neck of the amphora. The others stood in a watchful circle around their prize. They exuded a tense willingness to fight the increasingly raucous crowd of seamen if necessary. “We’ll be all right without food,” the woman said as she jerked the knot tight, “but the sun’ll be our death if we’re still out in the morning with nothing to drink.”

  “The Sun is life,” Perennius said sharply as Sabellia’s words tripped a childhood recollection of blasphemy. But he was beyond that now in his conscious mind; beyond trust in anything but himself and perhaps—“Let’s get in the water,” the agent said. He bent and lifted one end of the twenty-foot grating.

  Perennius slid into the sea after the makeshift float. He made as little noise as possible. Sestius followed with a huge splash, as attention-getting as it was unnecessary. The port outrigger from which they were abandoning ship was only three feet above the water now. Sabellia knelt, tossed the free end of her sash to her lover, and lowered the amphora with the minimal commotion of a duck diving. The jar was heavier than water, but the sea buoyed it up enough that the wool sash was an adequate shackle. The woman’s tunic billowed up away from her body as she slipped in feet-first.

  The sea was ice encasing Perennius’s battle-heated body. The salt was fire on his wound. The lips of the wound puckered. The agent gasped. It felt for a moment as if lava were being sucked into his marrow.

  “Gaius, Calvus!” Perennius hissed “Get in!” He could not have shouted even if the situation permitted it, but the harsh fragment of voice which pain left him suited well the whispered imperatives needed at the moment.

  Gaius stared at the float with the expression of a man startled by Medusa. Both his hands were locked on the hilt of the sword sheathed at his right side. The skin over his knuckles was as mottled as that of his face. The grating had begun to drift away from the liburnian, pushed lightly by the pressure of the three who had caught hold of it.

  Without speaking or even appearing to see his comrades in the water, the young Illyrian turned back toward the tumult on deck. Perennius started to call Gaius’ name again in furious despair. He was certain that he would have to climb aboard again and try to throw the courier bodily into the water—that or abandon him. Perennius was damned if he was going to abandon—but he need not have worried. He had forgotten Calvus.

  The tall man stood in his attitude of concentration. The splash Sestius had made had drawn some attention but no anger, not yet. There was still wine to be looted. The sun bled through clouds on the horizon. The sight of people drifting off toward it still looked like an act of despair, not hope. Later, and not very much later from the speed with which the Eagle’s bow settled, Perennius expected a blast of rage directed at everything surrounding those who saw themselves condemned. The agent and his companions had to be well beyond missile range of the liburnian by the time that happened.

  Gaius turned back and stepped off the side of the ship. He had the blank-eyed aplomb of a man who had forgotten there was a drop-off. He spluttered in the water. Perennius seized him by the neck of his tunic and dragged him to the float with an expression of relief and joy. Calvus, quiet but now mobile again, sat awkwardly on the catwalk and pushed himself into the sea. Even though his feet were already in the water, the tall man managed to make a considerable splash. The agent continued to grin as he reached out to grab Calvus’ hand. The traveller was as clumsy as a hog on ice, but by the gods! he was good to have around in a tight place.

  Blazes, they all were—all his companions. If the empire were kept by no one worse … it would be kept, as it seemed probable it would not in reality.

  “I think,” said the agent, shaken by reaction and the rage which was the only way he knew to combat despair, “that if we all kick together—quietly!—we can get a few hundred feet away without attracting much attention. We’ll worry then about navigating. For now, the important thing is not to catch javelins between our shoulder blades.”

  Suiting action to his words, the Illyrian scissored out a kick that did not break the surface of the water. It was excruciatingly painful to his right thigh. That was, in its way, a blessing. It took his mind away from the uselessness of his action and the mission beyond it to the only goal which had mattered to Aulus Perennius for twenty years: the stability of his world.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It became much worse after dark. While there was still a trace of light, it served as a goal toward which to kick. When even that trace had shrunk and vanished, the grating was alone with the sea and the moonless sky. Perennius trusted Calvus’ sense of direction, though he did not understand the mechanism. The others seemed to trust Perennius, though the gods alone knew why. He should never have set sail without a full complement of Marines! When he got back, he’d find the bureaucrat responsible and—

  It was hard to imagine getting back to Rome, when you were thrusting at the water which surrounded you without even a horizon to be seen.

  Sabellia yelped. She began splashing at the water with an arm as well as her legs. Sestius, across from her a
t the “bow” end, shouted, “What is it? What is it?” as the float bobbed and yawed.

  The commotion subsided as abruptly as it had begun. “It’s all right,” the woman gasped. She was clinging to the grate with both hands again. They had all stopped their desultory kicking for the moment. It was a good time for another break. “Something b-bit my toe. It was just a nibble, but…” Sabellia did not have to finish the sentence for the others to scan the surface around them. It was so dark that no fin could have been glimpsed against the waves anyway.

  There had to be more small fish than sharks, of course. In Italy, still protected from the shambling terror of the Germans, rich men raised mullets as pets as much as for food. The owners could sit on the lips of their ponds and call, while the water boiled with scaly bodies rushing to be the first to caress their master’s fingers. That memory was now like a scene from Hell.

  “Do you want a sword?” Perennius called forward to the woman. Gaius had kept his blade, lashing it to the grating between him and the agent. If it would offer Sabellia some security, that was better than having the salt etch it uselessly where it was now.

  “No, it just startled me,” the woman said. “I have my knife, if I needed…” She reached over with one hand and stroked the clothes in a soggy packet between her and the centurion. All the castaways but Calvus, alone in the stern where his efforts equalled the combined efforts of the rest of them, had stripped off their clothing only minutes after they set out on the float. The cloth had dragged at their limbs, weighting and robbing of force all their attempts to distance themselves from the liburnian. Tied atop the grating, the garments did not interfere with movement, but they were still available against the morrow’s sun. Sunburn could disable as thoroughly as blazing oil when its victims were spread-eagled on the sea for its attentions.